Honegger • Schoenberg

Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht; Honegger: Symphony No. 2 Baltic Chamber Orchestra/ Emmanuel Leducq-barôme Rubicon RCD1043 56:30 mins

Rubicon Classics’s previous highly acclaimed release featuring the Baltic Chamber Orchestra under Emmanuel Leducqbarôme gave us an imaginatively conceived programme of Strauss’s Metamorphosen and Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony, bringing together two works that in their very different ways reflect movingly on the horrors, cruelty and deprivation of war. In contrast, there seems to be a less obvious thread to this new recording which places Schoenberg’s hyper-romantic Verklärte Nacht alongside the gritty often claustrophobic textures of Honegger’s Second Symphony, composed in the early 1940s during the German occupation of Paris.

Perhaps the most obvious link between the Schoenberg and the Honegger is that both their emotional trajectories move from moods of darkness towards light. But in sharp contrast to Schoenberg’s magical transfiguration, light in Honegger’s case seems much closer to unresolved expectation.

The concluding bars of the Honegger, with the Bach-like chorale melody intoned defiantly by the trumpet and first violins, sound particularly thrilling in this performance which packs a mighty punch in the earlier disorientating and frenzied energy of the Finale. Leducq-barôme and the Baltic Chamber Orchestra are also impressive in the more reflective moments of the Symphony, such as the brooding melancholy of the slow introduction to the first movement and the anguished lament of the central Adagio mesto.

Curiously, the emotional intensity which Leducq-barôme brings to the Honegger is far less evidenced in the Schoenberg. Despite some very adept playing, the interpretation seems a little understated, particularly in the more highly-charged expressionistic sections. This approach inevitably nullifies a sense of foreboding that is so intrinsic to the work and it also diminishes the overwhelming impact of the sudden transformation to the major key halfway through the score. Erik Levi

PERFORMANCE ★★★

RECORDING ★★★★★